Four Great Immersive Story-telling Tools For Writers and Designers

Immersive story-telling combines the beauty of great design with the magic of the traditional long-form story. It’s actually been around since the 90’s although with the rapid advances in technology, it’s only now taking off. Take note, because this is a brand new way to engage with your audience!

The Blue Print

The original immersive story-telling experience comes from the Philadelphia Inquirier, who published a long-form story about the dramatic raid of Mogadishu. This then evolved into a book and then famous movie called Black Hawk Down. The immersive storytelling featured video, audio, maps, links and photos. Amazingly, it’s still available online. Click the photo to see for yourself.

Although it looks a bit shabby by today’s standards (the world of HTML5); it’s actually well put together and does everything it says on the tin.

What is Immersive Story-telling?

Transmedia or immersive storytelling apps engage with the audience in an audiovisual way instead of just via words. Nowadays comics can be converted into transmedia apps along with novels, non-fiction stories, news stories, advertising and even video games. Basically anything with a solid narrative. These stories immerse the reader and make them feel as though they are there. There is a PR element there too. Telling a brand or person’s story through this medium can be a particularly powerful way to reach your core audience. Here are some tools to make the magic happen!

1. Shorthand

The Shorthand app is an elegant new way of presenting long-form text pieces. It allows the producer to highlight areas of text and images, and allows these elements to move along with the reader as she scrolls down the page. There are plans in the pipeline for a free version too. ESPN executed Shorthand well in their piece on The Best of Football in 2013.

The technology in this app is similar to the previously mentioned WireWAX. Zentrick creates an interactive video by adding links to parts of the video. They also include a browser-based editing facility that allows producers to build interactive elements into the video on the fly. After this it’s possible to share and measure the influence of the video with in-built analytics. Harper Collins, Unilever and Wall Street Journal have all used Zentrick in the past.

Is created by Mozilla Firefox and is another browser-based tool. This one allows you to add extra events, images or links to an underlying video or audio file. Popcorn Maker gives producers great flexibility in how they tell their story. In the past, BBC used this app effectively to tell the story of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor who died during the G20 protests in 2009. The BBC interactive video allowed users to trace Tomlinson through London during the last hours of his life. Check it out for yourself!

We hope that you’ve found this article about immersive story-telling inspiring. And that you’ve gained fresh ideas for your online marketing strategy. For more ideas, speak with Total Web Design today!